Historian League Visit

October 17, 2009

Reported by Tom Gaylord

The League of WWI Aviation Historians
(www.overthefront.com) held
its bi-annual symposium in San Antonio and the final activity planned
on their agenda was to visit Old Kingsbury Aerodrome.

The volunteers who showed up worked throughout the morning to get
everything set up. Since the weather was nice everything was brought
out of the hangars. Surprisingly - the hangars needed sweeping again,
even though that had been done just the weekend before. The shop hangar
was the worst.

Everything out in the sun sure made for an impressive display. A couple
of airplanes were washed off a bit to improve their appearance. Jon White
spent a lot of time on the Rearwin Sportster and it really looked great!

Bill Walsh set up signs and brought in name tag materials and beverages
for the volunteers and our guests.

The League's tour bus held 57 passengers, but the group was too large
and so members started trickling in by private car at 1 PM. The bus
actually arrived at 1:40 PM. We didn't fly anything for them, but we did
run the Triplane and the Canuck - that happened at 2:30 PM.

I overheard several PFM members say that they learned a lot from our
visitors, and I know the visitors appreciated the displays. For my part,
there were so many reknowned WWI aviation authors in the group it was
amazing! As an added bonus - Fred Murrin, the U.S.'s premier expert
on rotary engine rebuilding was among the visitors.

Terry and Jerrie Bledsoe ran the merchandise stand and managed to pull
in some money (have no idea how much), and the donation box was out!